A national energy policy has been proposed by the Federal Administration and is currently being implemented through Federal Legislation. Some of the elements of this national energy policy require vastly improved and extended means of gathering and processing data on electric power generation and consumption. To better conserve energy, the Federal Agencies governing power production and distribution are requiring utilities to gather information for the possible implementation of different means of billing the ultimate user for power. These agencies are currently considering the charging of different prices for electric energy at different times of the day and for different seasons. These two techniques are known as "time-of-day rates" and "seasonal rates". A third measure is charging reduced rates for power which may be interrupted at the option of the power company. All of these measures will conserve energy by making it cheaper for consumers to use energy during periods of low overall consumption. At these times, "peaking units" are not in use and the energy being consumed is produced by the most efficient "base-load units". "Peaking units" are the power company's least efficient generating units. Some are designed to be easily brought into operation when a quick increase in power demand is encountered. They often run on expensive natural gas or diesel fuel. "Base-load units" are the power company's most efficient units and normally are kept running at all times. Efficient coal-fired and nuclear plants are "base-load units". These types of billings, in effect, encourage the use of electricity produced by the most efficient means, the "base-load units". The implementation of these programs can be aided by studies using remote metering and billing using remote metering.
Remote metering is also being encouraged and may be required in the supply of electric power to large buildings. In the past, many large buildings, such as multiple unit apartment buildings, have been metered at only a single point and have received only a single bill for electric power. This is called "master metering". Under Section 115 of the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1978, "master metering" on certain types of new large buildings is prohibited. Further, the reduction of existing "master meter" installations is encouraged. By individually metering each dwelling unit in a large building and billing the actual user for the power consumed, it is believed that the user will be encouraged to conserve power. To implement this, meters will be installed for each unit in new buildings. For older buildings, individual metering in the conventional manner would require rewiring the entire building with heavy power carrying conductors. In many structures this is not economically feasible.
The Federal Government is also considering exempting certain power uses from its power conservation policies. Certain "life line" services would be required to be billed separately at a price not directly related to cost of production. Thus, electric power for federally mandated essentials such as cooking and lighting would have to be supplied to some customers at a different rate than "non-essential" power for television sets and the like. All of these individual programs within the national energy policy will require extensive metering, load studies, and information processing by utility companies.
Additionally, under the Power Plant Industrial Fuel Use Act of 1978 monitoring of coal, oil and gas used in the production of electricity and the efficiency of this use will be necessary. A flexible, low cost and portable system to monitor various elements in the overall fuel use system will greatly ease performance of these tasks. For example, a system of monitors on a gas turbine peaking unit measuring gas consumption, electric output, the temperature of exhaust fumes, and other variables and recording these values and the time of day may be of use in determining and improving the efficiency of the unit in its particular installation.
All of the above discussed situations commend inexpensive, portable, rugged and light weight monitoring systems. Further, the information monitored must be presented in a form usable to a digital computer as the only practical means presently known to the inventors to assimilate and evaluate the large amounts of information collected over an extended period of time is by means of a digital computer. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,135,573, issued to the present inventors. Other systems for data collection known to the inventors are not as readily adaptable to cope with this type of information retrieval challenge. These other systems have been used by the electrical power generating industry in the past for studies of power consumption or "load studies". However, the need for more comprehensive and current "load studies" has greatly increased over the past several years because of the noted greater public and governmental interest in conserving electric power, thereby rendering these other systems at least partially obsolete. Utility companies must now know much more about how power is currently used in order, as aforesaid, to devise effective means to conserve it. The cost of producing power used in various applications must also be determined in order to develop compensatory prices which encourage proper energy utilization and conservation.
Accordingly, the conception of this invention has been to provide an improved system which is even more useful and adaptable for monitoring numerous devices, transmitting signals generated by this monitoring process to a receiver and for conditioning the signal so that it is easily recordable on magnetic tape or other means useable in a digital computer.